-LNBA urges revive debate on implementing TRC recommendations
By Peter Toby, tobypeter71@gmail.com
The Liberia National Bar Association says it’s about time that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report be brought back to the center stage of national discourse.
The Bar’s Secretary General, Cllr. Bobby Livingstone asserted that the document, which has been shelved for over a decade now, must be scrutinized and acted upon.
He said this sensitive topic has already been itemized for their next congress slated for March 28-30 this week in Kakata, Margibi County outside the Liberian capital, Monrovia.
“This matter can no longer be swept under the carpet without any action; and that’s why we at the LNB want to lift at the level of the forum of Liberian lawyers at our next congress,” Cllr. Livingstone said.
Speaking in an interview Monday at the Temple of Justice, Cllr. Livingstone pointed out that the LNB is seeking further actions because the TRC recommendations border on peace and stability, as well as the survival of the state and its people.
“In peace and stability we as lawyers thrive; in chaos, we cease to have any career” he stressed, dispelling fears and contentions in some quarters that implementing the TRC recommendations could undermine the country’s peace and stability.
A UN Concluding Observation Report on Liberia, released in July 2018, expressed concern that the country has done very little to implement recommendations of the T RC. Portions of the Commission’s report recommend prosecution and ban from holding public office for categories of perpetrators.
“None of the alleged perpetrators of gross human rights violations and war crimes mentioned in the TRC report, has been brought to justice, and that some of those individuals are, or have been holding official executive positions, including in the government,” the UN Concluding Observation report mentioned last year.
Accounts of Liberia’s civil unrest which lasted from December 1989 – August 2003 are replete with tales of massacres carried out by various warring factions; notable among them, the Lutheran Church, Carter Camp, Duport Road, Sammay and Tenebu massacres in which thousands including suckling infants were hacked to death by fighting forces.
In its final report released in 2010, the TRC came up with the following findings and conclusion:
Conclusions
- The major root causes of the conflict are, according to the TRC, attributable to poverty, greed, corruption, limited access to education, economic, social, civil and political inequalities; identity conflict; land tenure and distribution; the lack of reliable and appropriate mechanisms for the settlement of disputes; as well as the “duality of the Liberian political, social and legal systems which polarizes and widens the disparities between the Liberian peoples – a chasm between settler Liberia and indigenous Liberia (Consolidated Final Report, Vol. II, p. 16).”
- All factions to the Liberian conflict are responsible for abuses, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
- The massive wave of gross violations and atrocities assumed a systematic pattern of abuse.
- All factions committed gender based violence against women and recruited children to participate in acts of violence.
- “External state actors in Africa, North America and Europe participated, supported, aided, abetted, conspired and instigated violence, war and regime change for political, economic and foreign policy advantages and gains (Consolidated Final Report, Vol. II, p. 18).”
Recommendations
- The TRC advised for the establishment of an Extraordinary Criminal Tribunal for Liberia and named individuals, corporations and institutions recommended for prosecution or, in some cases, for further investigation.
- The commission also included a list of individuals recommended to be barred from holding public office for thirty years (including President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf).
- The commission urged the Government of Liberia to guarantee the full enjoyment of social, economic and cultural rights, in addition to civil and political rights.
- The TRC’s report called for the establishment of a National Palava Hut Forum as a complementary tool for justice and national reconciliation. The commission recommended that the Palava Hut process be based on traditional dispute resolution mechanisms. Persons recommended for prosecution in the TRC Report for the commission of international crimes would not be entitled to be pardoned through the Palava Hut process.
- The TRC recommended that the Government of Liberia assumes its full responsibility under international law to provide reparations for all those individuals and communities victimized by the years of instability and war, especially women and children. The commission recommended a reparation program of approximately US$500m over 30 years. The commission recommended general amnesty for children, and amnesty for lesser crimes in an effort to foster national healing and reconciliation if individuals admit their wrongs and express remorse.
- The commission recommended that institutional reform must be implemented to promote good governance and human rights, and to prevent the recurrence of abuses.